Page 89 of Smooth Sailing

I thought this, because she told me that was the way it was. She harped on quite a lot about how Dad “ruined me and our family,” and how difficult it was to be replaced and have to start “from scratch,” and then when things ended with Brendon it was because “your father’s treachery ruined me for all men.”

As noted, Brendon came quick, well within a year of them divorcing (I didn’t like him either, and he didn’t like me—I’d been eight). Rick came quickly after, and she didn’t blink when he moved them up to Idaho.

It was like she wasn’t leaving a daughter behind.

That hurt too. Then, and now I was allowing myself to remember it.

Over the years, I just put the emotional effort in to forgetting it happened.

“Now you wanna tell me why I feel the need to go out and buy more donuts for you?” Big Petey asked.

I turned again to him. “I’m just noticing stuff about Mom that irks me and wondering why I didn’t really notice it before.”

Big Petey had a ready answer. “We got blinders on with our parents. We need them to be perfect, or at least as good as we can make them in our heads. They made us, for one. So they’re a part of us.”

He seemed to drift after he said that, doing it so bad, I got concerned. He wasn’t young, but he seemed sharp.

“Well, goddamn,” he whispered like he was talking to himself.

“What?” I asked.

He visibly shook it off and refocused on me.

“Nothin’, darlin’. Something just occurred to me. Anyway, getting back to it. We also need to know we can count on them for answers and support. But no one is perfect, Di, and every kid figures it out sometime that their parent is just a person, figuring it out like all the rest of us.”

“Seems like I’m a late bloomer,” I mumbled.

“You said she made plans to come this weekend. That mean she don’t live close?”

I shook my head. “Idaho.”

“How long’s she lived there?”

I thought about it and said, “She moved when I was ten.”

“You see her a lot?”

“When I was at school, summers. Some holidays. When I graduated high school, not as much.”

“Not close enough for you to get a lock on it sooner, sweetheart,” he shared. “That kinda time, it’s all good. Vacations and celebrations. Day to day life is a different thing.”

Life was a different thing.

Like the life my dad lived where he was ambitious. He wanted to make money, make partner, make a name for himself, and he was mother and father to a daughter.

He sucked at it, but he didn’t shirk it. There was never a time when he seemed pissed he was saddled with me. He lived his life. He worked. He dated. He golfed and played tennis. And yeah, in a perfect world, maybe he should have spent more time with me, and when he did, he was less hard on me.

But he stuck. He wanted to. Because he was my dad.

I was getting the supremely uncomfortable feeling I’d been too hard on him.

Big Petey cut into my thoughts by handing them back to me. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Di. You were livin’ your own life too.”

“Right.”

“You wanna talk about that more?” he offered. “I got some livin’ under my belt myself. May not have all the wisdom, but what I got, I’m good to share if you wanna lay it on me.”

God, Big Petey was the best.

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